AT&T Suffers Massive Outages II ? Labor Related?

Reader feedback indicates continued widespread DSL outages in the U.S.with some businesses brought to a virtual standstill by it.

AT&T Labor Issues

Dallas based AT&T Inc. announced this afternoon that they have reached three-year agreements with unions covering some 22,000 works ? there?s still another 20,000 that have now formed picket lines to protest claims of unfair labor practices and have filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board.

A spokesman for AT&T said that the company had been negotiating in ?good faith? with the unions since February and is ready to return to the bargaining table. He added that the company is not proposing to lower wages or take away benefits, calling the workers ?very well-compensated?.

BSN* Take

We think that it would be naïve not to relate these two events. Workers deciding to hit the picket lines instead of taking care of business are, by all probability, the root cause of the outages – expect outages and connection problems to continue short term.

Hopefully AT&T and Labor can settle their bargaining issues and get back to work so the rest of us can too.